The Kissing Couple As Muse

There are times in life when we find our best inspired by the worst possible circumstances: a crisis brings out our most stable instincts, or we respond sanely to a flurry of madness that engulfs us. Perhaps we are just wired that way – I know I am – but more likely, even for those who are not, the extreme by nature acts as an inevitable catalyst. And the opportunities we seize depend on the leanings of our will.

A young couple photographed kissing in the midst of a riot in downtown Vancouver recently offer a good example of life seized with both hands. Caught in the middle of violence, madness and mayhem, it would have been easy for them to panic or behave badly. Instead, the young man in question made an unlikely and extraordinary choice. His girlfriend knocked down by riot police, their safety compromised, he fell to the ground and embraced her.

She was frightened, he said. He wanted to calm her down.

A freelance photographer in the area caught the image on camera. The photo went viral, and since then, the couple have been besieged with media requests from around the world.

When I was reading about the riot and first saw the photograph, I thought it must have been photoshopped or staged. But after watching an interview that Scott Jones and Alexandra Thomas did with the CBC, I was amazed to discover that not only was it real, but the couple themselves are refreshingly candid and unpretentious.

The question we might all indulge in at a time like this is, why the mass appeal?

I would like to see bloggers of all stripes rise to the occasion. This image, with its “make love not war” message, has a little something in it for all of us. Artists would do well to draw on this for fuel. It is rare that we can be witness to something so poignant and tender in the midst of such turmoil. That Scott Jones dared to express heart in the face of anarchy and bedlam is a testament to the calibre of his character.

For me personally, this image resonates as a powerful reminder of what continues to grow in me as I age. For all our woes about getting older, it seems to me that the process brings with it a new found capacity for the paradoxical; an ability to embrace beauty in what is not pretty.

And that, to me, is what makes life rich.

The Shifting Ground of What Makes Me Woman

There is a time in a woman’s life when the things she has relied on to remind her She Is Woman start breaking up – like a picture on a television screen with a faulty digital box. The monthly cycles of her body – the ones she has been deeply intimate with for so long – begin a process of fragmentation. Signs, symptoms, sensations – they disband, scatter, roam about like gypsies. An upheaval takes place in her temperament; in everything she has known herself to be. The steward of her code abandons ship, and an unruly voice emerges, determined to betray her innermost thoughts. Many of the beliefs she has called her own become estranged; a process of liberation unfolds. She enters unchartered territory.

It’s called menopause, or more accurately, peri-menopause.

At 48, I’ve gotten pretty good at weathering the storm, and I think I’ve even done one better – I’ve welcomed the disruption of a life tightly lived, and been grateful for the wreckage of carefully constructed ideals. But the turbulence in my body is another story. The natural ebb and flow; the yin and yang of my body’s natural rhythm is in disarray, and it has been quite an unsettling experience.

That rhythm was central to how I related. Where I was in my cycle either propelled me out or drew me in. I always knew what I needed, my cycle as my guide. Every month, the waxing, the building of the tides; the arousal of ancient passions, and the ache for a man’s penetration. Every month, the waning, the turning inward to the call of the wild. In the days approaching ovulation, my inlands would hum. I wanted contact, communion, engagement. A week before menstruation, I craved solitude, and the space to create. No matter where I was, I had my bearings.

Now, I have lost those bearings. I don’t know where I am in my cycle anymore. I don’t know when the blood will flow or where it comes from. I think I am ovulating and then...the feeling dissipates. Casual sex is out. My system is in a profound state of confusion or indecision, I’m not sure which. I can’t tell if I’m coming or going. Is the sensitive animal of my body lost? Or is she simply re-positioning herself? As I prepare for the end of my fertile phase, I know this does not mean the end of my womanhood, as popular lore might have me think. To the contrary. I am of the mentality that I am entering into the prime of my life.

Why, then, do I feel so disoriented? How do I make of this something real?

Imagination As Gospel

There is nothing in this world, arguably, that has the capacity to move in the same way a good story does. Stories are multi-layered, speaking to us on more than one level at once, and indirectly. Ideologies communicated to us in books or lectures don’t always stick – we can listen to them again and again while remaining utterly impenetrable, even as we nod our heads in agreement. But a good story has a way of sneaking in the back door and reaching that part of us tucked far away from life’s disappointments. It can lift us out of our self-imposed drudgery and show us what we’ve forgotten.

My favorite form of storytelling is film. If it’s done skilfully, with a deep respect for the power of narrative, the end result can hold enormous impact. With repeated viewings, we often find different parts stirring us in different ways at different times. We love a good story because it takes us away and brings us home at the same time. The line between truth and fiction is absurdly thin. Even the most bizarre scenarios can resonate, and those of us who think deeply are propelled into a place of meaningful contemplation.

This year is the 35th anniversary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and some television stations are airing it on a rotating schedule. Tuning in to the first half recently – I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched the entire film – there was one scene that stood out to me this time. Jack Nicholson, a criminal serving a short sentence, is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation, where he amuses himself by goading the ball-busting Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). The tables eventually turn, and though Nicholson successfully campaigns to have the World Series baseball game shown on the ward television, Nurse Ratched refuses to acknowledge it. Nicholson responds by creating a ruckus, and a gleeful one at that.

Standing in front of the blank television screen, he starts commentating on an imaginary game with unbridled enthusiasm. It is so real, and so infectious, that when the other patients start gathering around him and cheering, you actually get caught up in it too. And it dawns on you that it doesn’t matter that the television isn’t actually on. The excitement Nicholson rouses in his peers is epic.

Thomas Moore once said that imagination is more weighty than fact. If we could mine the annals of our consciousness, we might discover experiences there that had little in common with the circumstances of our lives – experiences so vivid they stunned us with their repercussions. So what determines our experience more, I wonder – what we imagine or what actually happens? I am inclined to think it is how we imagine what is happening to us, and how we imagine what will happen.

And that includes our experience of aging. Though the forces that shape our experience are vast and complex, it might be wise to take our imagination a lot more seriously, and in this sense, consider living artfully in a world bent on rationalism.

Soccer & the Art of Courting

One of the things I love the most about World Cup Soccer season is being treated, on a daily basis, to images of male comradery in the media. Intimacy between men – especially heterosexual men – is not something depicted in the public realm very often, and personally, I get a real rush from it. There’s something about what I see that I think we need a lot more of in today’s world – Nelson Mandela was really on to something. And there is nothing like soccer to inspire it. Though I know very little about the game, what I have seen about the culture that surrounds it fascinates me.

I will never forget my 2002 World Cup experience. I decided I was going to get up at 5am to catch the final match in a large Toronto bar populated by Brazilian fans. There was a massive screen up and a group of drummers poised in the middle of the room. Whenever a player began picking up some momentum on the field, the drummers would start in with a rhythmic beat, gradually increasing both pace and intensity to reflect whatever they were watching on the screen. Women scattered around the room would dance. Then, when an attempt made at scoring failed, instead of deflating or cursing, the crowd would erupt in celebration.

What I learned that day was how important attitude is to developing real skill. It’s less about whether or not you score, and more about how you play the game. No wonder the Brazilians are repeated world champions. Every play was celebrated, regardless of the outcome. Rapture marked the occasion, and the ebbs and flows that are a natural expression of raw passion undulated through the room.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about that experience lately, and about what we could learn from the Brazilian mindset in the way we approach our relationships, especially with someone we’re attracted to. When we’re young, “courting” tends to be about looking good, snagging, ruffling our feathers, scoring. But as we get older, if we learn to go with it, hopefully we know better. We have the capacity to recognize what we’re missing by refusing to grow up. If we’re smart, we treat “courting” as a sort of a deft artistry, less interested in where we are going than we are in how we are getting there. Like the Brazilian approach to soccer.

Of course, we court in all kinds of contexts – not just lover-related. But think of the sexual as a template of sorts, because even those in committed relationships “court” their partner from time to time. One of the perks of aging for those who aren’t fighting it is a growing depth of perception that graces our day to day lives. Our sexuality takes on new dimensions. What we once thought of as “sexy” becomes laughable. We start paying attention to nuance in our social interactions. Conversations happen on more than one level – what we say comes second to how we say it; a pregnant pause can speak volumes. Even the smallest physical gesture can emit subtle, but powerful, erotic energy.

It’s not about ego anymore. It’s about a life lived on poetic terms, and the humbling experience of realizing we’re not important in the way we once thought. That love is not at all what we once made it out to be. And the willful, curious engagement of what comes our way when we’re busy making other plans.

Mirror as Portal

We’ve all had our own secret relationships with mirrors at some point or another through our lives: the reflection through which we obsess with our own self image. Sometimes a mirror is the first thing we get to when we wake up in the morning; other times, we avoid looking into one. Full-length mirrors are strategically placed in our homes, a portal into exploration of self; the tiny ones we carry become our reality check. If we find ourselves alone with one in a public restroom, we are sometimes struck with what we see there – the changes we hadn’t noticed before; a curve or a bulge we stop to admire; the stranger we fear or had not anticipated.

Mirrors provide all kinds of useful functions, many of which fascinate us, or at the very least, play with our perception in some way. We use large, unframed mirrors to create an illusion of space, or to make a room appear larger. We put mirrors on the ceiling over our beds for a source of erotic stimulation. Amusement parks build Halls of Mirrors, deliberately distorted for our own entertainment. Rotating disco balls at clubs covered in small mirrors cast moving spots of light across a dance floor. In the ancient Chinese system of Feng Shui, practitioners believe that a mirror will help to energize a room. And the metaphor “smoke and mirrors” – used frequently in pop culture references to indicate deception or pretense – came from the magician’s illusion: making objects appear or disappear by extending or retracting mirrors amid a confusing burst of smoke.

Jimi Hendrix wrote a song called a Room Full of Mirrors, and in a biography of the same name, Charles Cross describes a man who “had an extraordinary sense of self-awareness, and an uncanny ability to use music to express emotional truths.” He talks about a two-by-four-foot mirror that Jimi had created. “Inside the frame sat fifty-odd pieces of a shattered mirror, set in clay in the exact position they would have held upon the breaking of the mirror. The shards all point toward the center, where an unbroken plate-size circle rests.” It was, according to Jimi’s father, his Room Full of Mirrors. The song, Cross says, “tells the story of a man trapped in a world of self-reflection so powerful, it haunts him even in his dreams.”

By far the most fascinating use of a mirror I ever heard was from a teacher I once worked with, who said that if you ever find yourself in a lucid dream (awake in a dream and able to direct it), you can look for your reflection in a mirror to “lock” you in.

Recently, I had the good fortune to interview one of the most interesting people I have ever met. A scholar, architectural historian, and a specialist in Western esoteric traditions, he struck me as a sort of a mystic Sherlock Holmes. Frank Albo penned the Hermetic Code, a book about his groundbreaking discoveries of Freemasonic symbolism in the Manitoba Legislative Building. He spoke to me about the cornerstone of Hermetic philosophy, the concept “as above, so below; so below, as above” -- that the entire universe, and all things in it, is a sea of mirrors.

In other words, he said, everything is inter-connected.

Ah – yes, everything is inter-connected. Well I’ve lived by that philosophy for most of my life. But hearing it described in this way – namely, a sea of mirrors – inspired me to think more deeply into it. For as long as I can remember, even in the throes of dire escapist behavior, I’ve wanted in. I’ve wanted to know that stranger in the mirror. I’ve wanted to have the courage of heart to embrace what I see there; to perceive the “as above” reflected in her face. I don’t want to wake up at 62, or 75, to discover I am still removed from what I know.

For that is surely what the second half of life is about – learning to relax into what we know, and to meet the stranger in the mirror at last.



LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come
when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own front door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letter from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott


I invite my readers to share their thoughts on the word “mirror”: stories or myths they’ve heard, favorite metaphors, intriguing associations. It is my intent to write a follow-up post on this subject, depending on the response.

Frank Albo will be teaching a course called Forbidden Knowledge, which will put into proper context the shadowy world of occult philosophy and embark on a fascinating journey through five centuries of mystical traditions, from Renaissance sorcery to modern ceremonial magic. It will explore religious mythology, occult history and code-breaking symbolism. For more information visit www.frankalbo.com

Choreography of the Soul

It’s always been curious to me why it is the events in our lives unfold the way that they do. Not in an analytical sort of way, but in a way that beholds the Great Mystery of a larger design; that sense of meaning found in trusting a higher purpose. That random things do happen, but most of the hand we are dealt is not random. That stuff goes down, and people come into our lives for a reason.

That we have an active role to play in living out our destiny.

Maybe there are folks out there for whom life works out pretty much according to plan. But for most of us, I think, life is what happens to you when you are busy making those plans – as the dictum goes. For most of us, things don’t work out at all the way we had expected. You think you got it all sorted out: where you’re going, what success looks like, the kind of person you will end up with, the kind of relationship you see yourself thriving in. And then someone or something happens along the way that turns everything on its head.

As Thomas Moore says, we may discover we are most ourselves when we are furthest from the self we think we ought to be.

I suspect most people reading this blog will know what I’m talking about. People who get married young, endeavor to live the American dream and follow all the rules – they’re another breed. I’m speaking to those who find themselves, at mid-life or older, without a partner, or questioning some major aspect of their life, or embarking on a journey that on some level they know risks shaking up their worldview. Because they’re the ones who are called upon to go deeper, to re-visit old assumptions or belief systems, to question what they held dear or what they were taught. They’re the ones to realize that happiness may come in a form unlike anything they had ever anticipated.

This is why, I think, it is so important to allow relationships to develop organically – to not impose our agenda on them, as much as we can. Especially romantic liaisons. To pursue someone for the sole purpose of steering it toward an end result is as much of a loss to our spiritual selves as it is to have sex with the sole purpose of getting off. The journey, or the lovemaking, is what really matters. As you get older you start to see this more and more. You start to define things differently. You see that a relationship that doesn’t last isn’t necessarily a failure. That we come into each other’s lives for a reason, at intervals that are often impeccably timed.

And if you’re lucky, you become an initiate, entering a world in which autonomy and intimacy can co-exist if you really work at it. Sources of unease become your teacher. You lose interest in molding other people into whatever it is you thought they ought to be. A lifelong courtship with the freedom of discovery begins.

You abandon the quest for life according to plan, and return instead to the call of the wild.

The Hub of Aging with Grace: Travel

It’s a well-known fact that one of the perks to getting older is that you learn to stop wasting time on the things that don’t matter. In relationships – with friends and lovers alike – you start getting really clear on what it is you value, which is often not at all what you once thought. And then there are the “dealbreakers” – the indelicate term that speaks for itself – that tend to come with experience, and sometimes offer the most surprise of all.

I have two such “dealbreakers” that I’ve long operated by but only recently become aware of: a lack of curiosity in a person’s nature, and a lack of interest in travel.

Now, when I say travel, I mean it in more ways than one: travel to, or curiosity about, other countries and cultures; travel through different perspectives or ways of looking at life. We “travel” when we read a good book or immerse ourselves in a challenge that stretches us to see beyond our usual framework. And we “travel” when we smoke some really good, organic weed (forget about the stereotypical “stoner high” – I’m talking about weed the way it is meant to be used at its best, as a sacrament).

Whatever your fancy, it occurs to me that a commitment to travel, in some form, may just be the ticket we all need to aging with grace. Many of us know what it means to become “set in our ways”, and travel seems to offer a good antidote to that. But what I’m probing at here goes even deeper. If we accept how easy it can be to become embedded in our later years, we only have to ask ourselves how this might impede the growth and fruition of our character. Is this where we begin to shrivel? If we are dis-inclined to move, to “travel”, physically or otherwise, how does this ripple out into our experience of getting older?

Because it seems to me that as the years wear on, we have a depth of perception available to us that we never had before – entire new worlds open up, that when we’re young, we miss, because we’re too busy being a tourist.

Every time I look at myself in the mirror lately, I am aware of two opposing forces at work: a drive to fight the inevitable process I am bearing witness to, and a drive to connect; to dive headfirst into the life that beckons: a presence no longer concerned with mis-placed idealism. A place where the heart reigns, the soul compels and a hunger for substance prevails.

The way I see it, a commitment to travel, in the true sense of the word, means a commitment to exploring other ways of life unfamiliar to us; to be willing to abandon everything we know, and look at ourselves from an entirely different light.